Race: Difference Between Us Blog

The thesis of the video, Race: The Power of Illusion: Difference Between Us, is that race is not a biological difference among humans, but is more or less a regional difference which over time affected the peoples of that area’s skin color, hair type, and other physical characteristics that we have learned to attribute to “race.”

The creators of this video use relatively newly developed genetic techniques involving DNA to show that generally there are more genetic differences among people of the same “race” than there are in people from different corners of the world. Also, they show a perfect example of the misconceptions that most Americans have by introducing a group of students that are participating in a genetic workshop. These students automatically assume that they will be close genetic matches to other students that seem to have similar “racial” backgrounds, but by the end of the experiment they find (and in turn, we find) that this is just completely untrue. In fact, in a couple of instances the students found that they were more genetically similar to the students with whom they figured that they’d have major differences.

Although America as a whole is striving for racial equality, I have a feeling that there are millions of Americans that still truly believe that “race” is biological and genetic. Actually, I wouldn’t be surprised if my parents were still under such an impression. Racism, as we’ve been discussing these first few weeks of this course, has been ingrained in America’s society and therefore any advantages, be it physical or mental, are often attributed to racial differences. However, as this video explains, any differences that occur among races are actually due to the separation of people in the regions were they developped. Traits that appear to show up more in individual groups of people are more often than not due to the conditions of the areas that their ancestors lived. This even applies to skin color. Peoples who developped in areas of high concentrations of UV-rays, developped darker melanin producing skin so to aid in the adequet production of vitamin D.

I feel that this video does a good job of explaining that no matter how different people may look, we really are the same at our most basic level. This is something that a high school teacher of mine made a point to tell us in his class. He wanted us to have the knowledge nessecary to avoid ignorance. He probably influenced me the most of any of my high school teachers. He try to teach his students not only the course material that was required in the class, but also life lessons and life experiences that he had had and witnessed so that we would not make the same mistakes that others in the past have. One thing that I did take from the video that I found very interesting was that two fruit flies are actually more genetically different than humans are from chimps. How crazy is that?